Thursday, April 20, 2017

From Acceptance to Allyship: Creating a Supportive Environment for Trans and Non-Binary Co-Workers and Students

Nancy Williams, Amy Peterson, Al Forbes, and Mo Dyson; panelists

Organized by the Gender and Sexuality Studies Sequence at CMC, this panel will offer insight and strategies that move beyond simple conversations (“Trans 101”) around trans and non-binary people to more challenging and complex situations, in order to move beyond typical assumptions and to create positive environments where trans and non-binary students and colleagues can really thrive.

Nancy Williams is an associate professor of chemistry at the Keck Science Department where she has been for 14 years; she is a graduate of Harvey Mudd College. She has been a volunteer with the Leadership LAB of the LA LGBT Center since 2013, and has door-to-door canvassed on trans rights in LA, Miami, and Tacoma when “bathroom bills” threatened equal rights laws that protected trans people. She sings with the Trans Chorus of Los Angeles, and is on the planning committee for the Resist March, which will replace the LGBT+ Pride Parade in LA in 2017.

Amy Peterson (they/their/them) is assistant to the dean of the faculty and staff fellow at the CARE Center. They also volunteer with the Los Angeles LGBT Center on prejudice-reduction projects and with the committee for the Resist March, which will take the place of this year’s Los Angeles Pride Parade.

Al Forbes is the interim director at the Queer Resource Center of the Claremont Colleges. Before coming to Claremont, Forbes worked at Syracuse University, U.C. Santa Cruz, and Onondaga Community College. He currently serves on the executive board of the Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals and has given presentations on Queer and Trans* inclusivity at NASPA, the association for Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education.

Mo Dyson is a 12-year veteran of the United States Marine Corps. During his time in the military, his main job was as a euphonium instrumentalist in the field music program. Mo deployed to Iraq from 2004-2005 and served as an augment to the personal security detail for the commanding general of 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing. Now a sophomore at Pomona College, Mo plans to pursue a career in public health policy.

Thursday, April 20, 2017 - Lunch Program

Stalking: Preventing Murders in Slow Motion

Laura Richards

Laura Richards will discuss stalking and the best measures to combat it, developed through her time at Scotland Yard and as founder of Paladin.

Laura Richards is an internationally recognized expert and award-winning victims' advocate in the fields of domestic violence, stalking, sexual violence, risk assessment, and homicide. After a decade of analyzing violent crime at New Scotland Yard, she became the violence adviser to the National Police Chiefs Council. Trained by world leaders as a criminal behavioral analyst at the Behavioral Analysis Unit, National Centre for the Analysis of Violent Crime at the FBI and New Scotland Yard, Richards has applied her psychology degrees to analyze violent crime from a behavioral and preventative perspective. She has a BSc in Psychology and Sociology and an MSc in Forensic and Legal Psychology, with a background in intelligence-led policing. She places the victim’s voice at the center of her work, was the architect of the stalking and domestic violence legislation in the UK. She has won numerous awards for her pioneering work.

In 2013, Richards launched Paladin, the world’s first National Stalking Advocacy Service following the highly successful All Party Parliamentary Stalking Law Reform Campaign which she spearheaded, and which led to stalking becoming a criminal offence in 2012. Paladin supports, advises and co-ordinates the response to better protect high-risk victims of stalking. More recently she spearheaded the Domestic Violence Law Reform Campaign, which resulted in coercive control becoming a criminal offense, advising on the new law and the statutory guidance in the U.K.

Richards is the lead author of the booked entitled ‘Policing Domestic Violence’ published by Oxford University Press and has also published other numerous papers and articles.

Chris Bohjalian, author of New York Times bestselling novels about both the Armenian Genocide (The Sandcastle Girls) and the Holocaus (Skeletons at the Feast) discusses the links between these historical cataclysms. In a presentation that travels between Anatolia and Auschwitz, between the ruins of Armenian civilization in eastern Turkey and the rise of virulent nationalism in Weimer Germany, Bohjalian discusses the work of such scholars as Stefan Ihrig (Justifying Genocide) and Khatchig Mouradian as he highlights some of the parallels and connections while also touching on his family’s history, his writings, and how he has tried to make sense of genocide in his own books.

Critically-acclaimed novelist Chris Bohjalian's writings explore contemporary social issues and the ways in which they play themselves out in the lives of ordinary people. His work covers topics as diverse as midwifery, transsexual surgery, animal rights, homelessness, domestic violence and human trafficking, and the personal, moral, and ethical dilemmas that arise from them. The author of 18 books, most of which were New York Times bestsellers, his work has been translated into over 30 languages, and three of his books have become movies.

In his novel The Sandcastle Girls, Bohjalian explores the Armenian genocide, in which 1.5 million Armenians were killed during the First World War. The genocide is seen from the perspective of Elizabeth Endicott, who joins her father in traveling to Aleppo, Syria, to provide aid to deported Armenians. There she falls in love with Armen Petrosian, an Armenian engineer searching for his wife and child despite being certain they are dead. Publishers Weekly says that “Bohjalian’s storytelling makes this a beautiful, frightening, and unforgettable read.”

Bohjalian’s books have been chosen as Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Hartford Courant, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Bookpage and Salon. Among dozens of awards, Bohjalian has received the ANCA Freedom Award for his work educating Americans about the Armenian Genocide; the ANCA Arts and Letters Award for The Sandcastle Girls, as well as the Saint Mesrob Mashdots Medal, among many others.